Close shave as water tank collapses24/01/2007 NST

IPOH: A medical student escaped death
by seconds when a 1,000-litre water tank came crashing down into his
bedroom.

"I had gone to bed around midnight. About half-an-hour later I heard a
cracking sound from the ceiling. When it started breaking up, I jumped out
of bed and ran.

"I got out of the room just seconds before the water tank came crashing
through the ceiling. It landed within centimetres of my bed," said
20-year-old Ashraf Hamdan, a second-year medical student at Kolej Perubatan
DiRaja Perak.

The deafening noise woke up his housemates,
who were asleep on the ground floor of the rented house, and several
neighbours.

The two-and-a-half storey house in Taman Arena Kepayang was flooded. The
tank holds just over 1,100 litres of water.

The horrified landlord, Datuk Dr M. Gurdeep Singh Man, head of department
and senior consultant at Ipoh Hospital, said: "Someone could have died."

He said had informed the Perak Water Board of the incident.

Perak Housing, Local Government and Public
Transport Committee chairman Datuk Chang Ko Youn said: "We view this
incident seriously as someone could have been killed.